how do mystical writers interpret the winding stairs of three five and seven steps

The winding stairs represent the journey of mental and spiritual elevation, self-improvement, and the circuitous investigation of truth 12. Drawing upon Pythagorean number symbolism, the dominance of odd numbers throughout the ascent represents progress toward perfection 121.

The first three steps signify the three principal officers who rule a lodge—the Worshipful Master, Senior Warden, and Junior Warden—reassuring the candidate that he climbs with the support of the fraternity, while also symbolizing Deity and the three stages of human life 12. The number three refers directly to the ruling officers of a lodge, as an article on the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon's website notes.

The five steps symbolise practical knowledge and human faculties through the five human senses and the five orders of architecture 1. Mackey emphasizes hearing, seeing, and feeling as the three senses most closely tied to spiritual truths, while the architectural orders teach the Mason to plan, support, and adorn his own spiritual temple 1. Pythagoreans regarded the number five as a symbol of life—combining the first even and odd numbers—to represent dualities such as order and disorder, happiness and misery, or birth and death, an article on the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon's website observes.

The seven steps represent the complete circle of human learning and the full development of the soul through the seven liberal arts and sciences 1. Divided into the classical trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy), these disciplines provide the key to language and the secret laws of nature, with music acting as the connecting link between the natural and spiritual realms 1.

Wilmshurst treats the winding staircase in The Meaning of Masonry as an emblem of mystical elevation and inward contemplation. He frames the winding ascent as a spiritual movement that reverses man's descent into lower material existence, describing the approach of contemplation as leading inward like a winding staircase to the Holy of Holies within oneself, as a digital edition of his work hosted on Archive.org shows.